When Shenxiu (605-706) ,the master of Chan Buddhism, was summoned by Empress Wu of the Tang dynasty, the master and his disciples were treated with great honours and privilleges at court. After the master's death more honours were bestowed, unprecedent in the history of the Chan monks. His followers felt deeply and made new attempts to consolidate their gains. One of the attempts was to glorify the late master as the sixth patriarch of Chan Buddhism, but this claim of patriarchship enraged other branches of the tradition. They denounced and made counter claims, thus they split the Chan School into the Southern and the Northern branches, making their teacher Huineng (638-713) the legitimate sixth patriarch. The struggle for the sixth patriarch is well known, but the rivalry did not stop at that point, and continued into the following century. This struggle for the seventh patriarch has not yet been fully discussed by scholars. This paper collects related materials from twenty-three sources (I.e.,twelve epigraphical, six historical and five literary)，including some recent discoveries, and re-examines them in the light of recent scholarship. The following conclusions are made： (1) The dispute of the seventh patriarchship is a logical and historical continuation of the early dispute on the sixth patriarchship. (2) The controversy of the seventh patriarch began with the claim of Puji (651-739) and it was denounced by Shenhui (684-758) , but the denunciation failed to stop the claim at once. It was not until the mid-eighth century A.D. did the Heze and Niutou branches of Chan begin openly to make counter-claims of the seventh patriarch. It was towards the end of the eighth century that Shenhui has finally declared by the imperial court as the seventh patriarch. Thereafter. All the sources dated in the ninth century unaminously recorded that the patriarce is Shenhui. However, as the Heze branch of Chan declined after the fall of the Tang empire, the historical disputes in the Chan School no longer attract scholars' attention. (3) The dispute produced a number of new ideas or qualifications for the transmission of religious leadership, and these were new development in Buddhist as well as in Chinese history. (4) The idea of patriarchship in Chan Buddhism did not come from the Indian Buddhist tradition, but was an adaptation and transformation of the ancient Chinese way in recording family lineage. The word zong originally did nat have the meaning of "school" nor "sect"; but referred to "ancestor (s)."The Chan monks borrowed this secular Chinese uage of family lineage and transformed it into a sacred lineage of religious transmission, thus a teacher-disciple relationhip replaced the father-son lineage. The blood connection was hence transformed into a holy/truth connection. This transformation returned to the Chinese tradition again when the Neo-Confucian orthodoxy and the Daoist school adopted the usage in recording their religious lineage, hence the Chan idea of patriarchship had a larger sphere of influence on Chinese culture.
